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The Homepage virus, which displays pornographic websites and sets them as the user's homepage, may be an extreme example of so-called 'viral marketing'.

The Homepage virus, which displays pornographic websites and sets them as the user's homepage, may be an extreme example of so-called 'viral marketing'.

Three Dutch teenagers have circulated an email claiming that the outbreak of the fast-spreading virus was a literal viral marketing campaign, because once the .vbs attachment is opened it immediately takes the user's browser to one of four porn sites.

The plan, according to the Dutch threesome, is to boost hits on the sites by forcibly driving traffic to the pages. Apparently they hoped that the imminent success of their monster would open up career paths in "sneak advertising".

Antivirus companies are in agreement that the Homepage virus is spreading rapidly, with estimates of around 500,000 infected machines worldwide from F-Secure, and predictions by MessageLabs that it may be moving at a speed of 100 copies per minute.

Some companies may even have sent out 100,000 infected emails inadvertently. But, according to security experts, the most frustrating aspect of the outbreak is that this situation seems to repeat itself on a monthly basis.

Antivirus experts have warned companies to filter out double extension attachments or even attachments altogether to avoid being caught out by the same ruse over and over again.

The experts are also baffled as to how such viruses manage to thrive so well in the wild. Homepage is built with the Visual Basic Script Worm Generator tool, which was also responsible for the Kournikova virus.

It contains many of the default elements and attributes of Kournikova, noticeably the fact that it does no damage to an infected machine but merely replicates itself.

But the most amazing thing about this virus, according to Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, is that the "level of social engineering used to spread this virus is nowhere near as clever as that of the Kournikova example".

So the question being asked by antivirus experts everywhere is why people are still opening emails headed: "This is cool, look at this."